jam
/ˈd͡ʒæm/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.17 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "He is allergic to jam."
- "She loves eating jam for breakfast in hotels."
- "It's a blackmail ring, and the district attorneys get a share of the loot. […] Well, they got him in the same kind of jam, and soaked him to the tune of three hundred and eighty-six thousand."
- "She was married when we first met / Soon to be divorced / I helped her out of a jam, I guess / But I used a little too much force"
- "Where, where is my common sense? / How did I get in a jam like this?"
- "The pitcher's in a jam now, having walked the bases loaded with the cleanup hitter coming to bat."
Etymology
First attested in the early 18th c. as a verb meaning “to press, be pressed, be wedged in”. Compare dialectal jammock (“to press, squeeze, crush into a soft mass, chew food"; also "a soft, pulpy substance”). Perhaps from Middle English chammen, champen ("to bite upon something, gnash the teeth"; whence modern champ, chomp), of uncertain origin; probably originally onomatopoeic. The "performance" sense is first attested with regards to jazz in 1929, and its origin, though uncertain, is likely metaphorical, "something sweet made by the combination of many things", with influence from jamboree.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: chammen, -, जामा, جامہ
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈd͡ʒæm/
- British English: /ˈd͡ʒæm/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Food.